Jiki froze the moment he heard the sound. His ears sharpened as he tried to interpret it. It didn't take him long to realize it was coming from outside the barrier. There was a low hum that filled the air, followed by static that made even Jiki's hair stand on end, and then finally, a jagged scream tore through the sky. And Jiki remembered Satoru's warnings about a barrier's weakest point lying in two places.
When an opponent's more refined barrier overwhelms yours, or when an attack from outside strikes the external part of your barrier. A barrier was only as strong as it was because its protection and defense were focused inward. Those warnings had made Jiki take multiple things into consideration before deploying his barrier; the method Kenjaku had used to dispel his Amaterasu, as well as how heavily he had damaged Kenjaku ensured that he would never have to engage in a domain battle with the ancient sorcerer.
His quick action at trapping Kashimo as well as binding the reincarnated sorcerer's hands just in the likely scenario that he had a domain also reduced whatever threat that he could muster.
What Jiki had not expected or planned for was an attack from the outside. His head snapped to Kashimo as he analyzed the telltale signs of the man's technique. High above the black dome that formed Jiki's domain, Kashimo's staff appeared with a howl of cursed energy. The warped length of steel he had carried since his first life spun once, then shot down like a javelin hurled by the gods.
"This is not over, kid," Kashimo said as he grinned back at him. And in the stillness between breaths, a single sound cracked like judgment:
BOOM.
The metal staff, coughing lightning and ancient hate, slammed through the outer edge of Jiki's domain like a thunderbolt striking glass. Jiki only had a split second to see as the outer shell of his domain, both weaker by nature and lesser by sheer inexperience, splintered on contact. A fractured shriek echoed through the cursed space as sunlight shone, banishing his lies made real.
Then came the collapse.
The air folded in on itself, the scenery peeled apart, and the genjutsu slowly unraveled. The illusion embedded into the domain cracked with it. The stitched-up reality, what had moments ago been a world formed of a carefully crafted memory, lined with the sins of his past, the sins of another life, lies made real inside Heavenly Delusion, splintered. The cursed cross that held Kashimo and Kenjaku in mid-air crumbled as their bindings unraveled at their seams.
Kashimo dropped easily. His feet slammed against the dirt, and he landed in a crouched pose, lightning coiling along his arms and down the length of the staff that had slammed into his hands. Kenjaku's charred and heartless form was not as graceful. He dropped like a stone in water, his body slamming into the ground and remaining still.
He grinned like a madman. "Now that's more like it." He cracked his neck to the side. "You didn't think after so many years of fighting sorcerers of a stronger era, I would have no counter for a Domain Expansion, did you?"
Jiki remained silent, his previous surprise melting away, as he returned to his apathetic stare, his eyes drifting to the staff held in Kashimo's hands. He was already trying to break things down. The loss of his domain meant a heavy loss to his cursed energy from the invested energy required to make it in the first place. Yet, considering his sizable reserves as well as the fact his domain was Black Flash-fueled, he was not worried.
The second thing came down to a loss of innate technique. His eyes were not truly his innate technique, they were simply the storage, an internal housing unit much like the brain functioned for regular sorcerers. He didn't need to touch his cheeks to feel the blood trailing down like tears, but that was it. The clarity of his vision was still unmatched, which meant his gamble had succeeded. He had only burnt out his Tsukuyomi. Yet his other techniques remained. He pushed the ramifications, as well as what the discovery meant, to the side.
The second thing was Kashimo. The reincarnated sorcerer had pulled his staff to him with the aid of electricity, signifying some ability for magnetism, and the fact that Kenjaku had known. The clarity of his memory ensured that Jiki perfectly recalled the way Kashimo had snapped out a hand the moment he found himself in the domain, as well as Kenjaku's attempt at wasting time by creating a Simple Domain.
"You think too much, kid!" Kashimo roared as he charged toward Jiki, with the still-fading domain as a backdrop. A heartbeat later and Kashimo was on him.
The staff cracked toward his head. Jiki dodged to the side with a simple sidestep, but Kashimo moved like he was expecting it. He immediately spun the staff and lashed out with the butt, forcing Jiki to tilt back till his hair was kissing the ground. He didn't need to have his eyes on Kashimo to know the follow-up attack, so he pressed his hand to the ground behind him and flipped back as Kashimo swung in a low arc, aiming for his legs.
Jiki landed on his feet with a soft smile on his face. He had realized another essence of Kashimo's technique. He vividly remembered the strike that had burnt his hand, a strike caused by the charges that had flowed through him from every strike Kashimo had landed. Which meant blocking the ancient sorcerer's strikes was suboptimal… or were they?
A thought, a flicker of an idea fueled by his genius flowed into him as Kashimo lunged toward his staff first. Jiki slapped the tip of the outstretched staff up with the back of his palm, deflecting it, but he also felt as lightning arced from the blow and slipped into his body, but unlike the first time, he didn't flinch.
Lightening was a current that followed the route of least resistance, so he moved with it now. Flowed through it and guided the current within him. There was no hesitation, no pause to read the twitch of a muscle or the shift of a foot. He already knew. He buried his palm into Kashimo's chest, and the sorcerer's eyes widened in surprise at the feeling of lightning flowing back into him.
Kashimo reeled back in shock and whipped the staff in a full arc, aiming at his midsection. Jiki stepped into the strike, slipping inside the swing, and drove his knee into Kashimo's gut. The lightning-fueled sorcerer folded as the breath flew out of him. Jiki didn't stop.
His movements were synchronized and fluid with barely any breaks. His elbow smashed into the side of Kashimo's neck, and an open-palm strike sent his jaw up, leaving his throat exposed. A rabbit punch to it sent Kashimo choking on his own breath as Jiki grabbed at his head, but a last-minute dodge by Kashimo meant he only managed to grab the collar of his robe. He improvised on the spot and spun him sideways before slamming him into the ground.
Kashimo's back hit the ground, but he rolled with it, flipping to his feet again. The grin never left his face. Even if he still found it hard to breathe, he wheezed out a sentence with a laugh. "You've figured it out," he said, breathing hard, eyes wide with hunger. "You can read my movements better now, but not completely. Does this mean I've got to go all out now?" Kashimo finished, his eyes widening in joy.
Jiki did not care for his rambling. He closed the distance, and Kashimo lashed out with a blow once more. His strikes came faster, desperate. He mixed high jabs with spinning sweeps, forcing Jiki to shift his stance constantly, to react in split seconds, but none of it landed clean. Jiki weaved through it like he was expecting them, every movement was borne of precise calculation as well as unmatched perception.
He slipped past a strike and countered with a hook to the ribs that cracked something. Kashimo snarled in response and his staff came down vertically, but Jiki caught it with both hands and twisted his hip while lashing out with a kick, transferring the arc of lightning back to its wielder.
Despite the hit, Kashimo refused to let go of his end of the staff, not until Jiki kicked him again in the side, in the exact same place that his hook as well as his follow-up kick had landed. Kashimo's ribs broke as he finally let go of the staff. Jiki discarded it to the side as he rushed the older sorcerer again. Blood ran down Kashimo's cheek now, mixing with the static bleeding off his skin. And yet, yet he was still smiling like he was still holding something back.
Jiki didn't care. He stepped in, lashing out with a barrage of blows that Kashimo tried to parry, tried to dodge, but the damage had accumulated. His futile attempts did not matter. Every blow found its mark. Each hook, every palm strike, and kick landed with Sharingan-fueled perception to the places of maximum damage.
One final punch crushed into his solar plexus, lifting him off his feet, his arms outstretched to either side. Jiki spun on his feet as Kashimo rose in anticipation of what was to come, and as the staff twisted midair to return to its master, Jiki snapped a kick upward and shattered it mid-spin.
Splinters of metal, centuries old and preserved due to its transformation into a cursed tool by how much cursed energy Kashimo had pushed into it, scattered like shrapnel.
Kashimo crashed to the ground again and for the first time, he didn't return to his feet. Jiki turned away from the broken form behind him and turned back to where Kenjaku used to be only to see his body missing. He let out a single breath, before sending his curse energy in a controlled pulse around him, then his lips twitched at what it revealed. Instead of searching he focused on his hand.
The still burnt limb was the only reason Kashimo had lasted so long in Taijutsu against him. Every blow he had landed with it had been robbed of its strength, so with the few seconds he had, he immediately channeled his Reverse Curse Technique and watched it regenerate with speed. His Reverse Curse Technique healed and reinvigorated the limb till it was smooth, pale, and unblemished. Only then did he raise his head up once again.
His reserves were not what they used to be, even amped as they were by Black Flash. He had sustained damages, and his usage of the Reverse Curse Energy was a Curse Energy sink. Yet, when he turned on the spot and looked at Kenjaku, he knew he did not need much more. The body-hopper was on his chest and crawling. It seemed like the heart was not so vital an organ that the Reverse Curse Technique would not work.
He knew medic-nins that would've killed to have access to the positive energy generated by Positive curse energy. His eyes trailed Kenjaku's form and he watched as the man used positive energy to pump his own heart with blood.
"I don't think I've ever met such a resilient sorcerer before. He almost reminds me of you." A whisper drifted into his ears, Jorogumo's cackling following it.
Jiki slowly followed after the crawling form. "You're like a cockroach." He noted as he walked behind the man, marveling about the fact he could even move at all even while looking like a charred and burnt piece of man-shaped meat. "Why do you cling so hard to life when you have lived for so long already."
Kenjaku's reply was an attempt to drag himself further away, and then the whisper came. "M-my goals." Jiki stopped for a second. Recognizing the effort it had taken him to speak, then nodded in response. His eyes trailing the burnt form. He had been too distracted to truly take note of it earlier, but now that he had the time, he could see it. Unlike what it seemed at first, Amaterasu's damage had not been as lethal as he had hoped.
The supernatural black flames had managed to eat in deep, past skin and as far in as muscles, but the fact that he could move at all meant that Kenjaku had managed to dislodge the technique in a split second. That he could not heal the damages other than his eyes and tongue meant two things: either he simply didn't have the reserves for it, or more likely, Amaterasu resisted such healing.
In his past life, surviving and putting off Amaterasu alone would've been nearly impossible, but this life had its own set of rules, and he could already guess at one of the ways Kenjaku could've achieved this feat, but it didn't matter. He was just prolonging the inevitable. Kenjaku was going to die here. Today, Jiki was his executioner.
He took another step forward, and Kenjaku continued to crawl back pathetically. Another step, and one of Kenjaku's hand gave out, his still-melted elbows and knees tearing up against the rough-hewn ground. Kenjaku spun with pain and waved a hand at him, and Jiki felt it again, an explosion of Cursed Energy, then an inverse expulsion of increased gravity that almost forced him to his knees. But this was nothing compared to what Kenjaku had used with his full output.
Jiki took another step forward, and the ground cracked beneath his feet due to the increase in pressure weighing him down. It was a surprise that Kenjaku was able to use his technique at all. He had calculated that Kenjaku had used a split-second Domain Expansion to negate Amaterasu's flames. His technique should've been burnt out. Unless the split-second usage meant the burnout time was shorter, or since Kenjaku's modified brain had the ability to hold multiple techniques, did that mean he had multiple Domain Expansions as well?
Another heavy step and he was inches away from Kenjaku. That was when the technique spluttered out. Six seconds. That was how long he was able to hold it up. Even with murder in his pinwheeled eyes, Jiki's prodigious intellect went to work, breaking down and deciphering anything he could use for later.
He stood above the broken form of the woman who called herself Kaori Itadori, and now that he was looking at it, he could actually see it. Not skin, for Kaori's form didn't have any of those again, but the muscles and bone shape hinted to the faint familial features.
Kenjaku finally came to a stop. He stopped struggling and looked up with a bloodstained yet simple smile like he had made peace with his death, his bloodied hand twitching. "T-this was fun, wasn't it? Your Domain especially." He coughed up blood to the side before resting his head back on the ground.
There was a faraway look in Kenjaku's eyes when he spoke, before they refocused on Jiki with blurry eyes. "Despite all my preparations, distractions, and all my calculations and contingencies. Somehow, somehow, I still ended up underestimating you again so badly, didn't I Gojo Nozomi?"
Jiki noted the symptoms of heavy Blood loss. The weakness, the rapid breaths, the pale and clammy skin, the confusion. He cared little for the mistaken identity and less for the attack on the school. He had seen the monsters that had been unleashed and he knew his teammates were safe.
No, Jiki was fueled by a single thing. A single person. Kenjaku's attack on the Gojo Clan. Aiko. However, Kenjaku did not need to know that, so Jiki's reply was simple. "Yes." Then he raised his leg up and prepared to bury it inside Kenjaku's brain. It was time to see if the Reverse Curse Technique was powerful enough to regenerate the brain or keep the body functioning even without it.
That was when another voice rang out cheerfully. "Do you need my help, sensei?"
Jiki glanced back and frowned. The owner of the cheerful voice was a curse he had seen once; the memory remained in his head. A boy walking in the shadows of an alleyway with a blue-haired curse with a body that was remarkably covered with threads. Yet that had not been the only interesting thing about the curse. That was left to its startling human-like features.
The curse stared at him with those heterochromatic blue and gray eyes, and it smiled. Its patchwork face turned what should've been an innocent smile into something else. However, its uncanny human features were not what truly drew his attention this time. That particular award was given to what he had dragged alongside him.
The humanoid curse had twisted his physiology somewhat and had given himself two tails. Two tails that ended with their tips wrapped around the throats of an unconscious Yuji and Todo. Meanwhile, the curse was cradling an assortment of items in its hand ranging from paintings to a heavy box and down to weapons like a single-blade vajra, to strange vials housing organic fetus-like beings.
Jiki recognized some of the things in the curse's hands. There was only one place he could've gotten them from: the cursed armory, and even deeper there was the cursed safe that held things unmentionable, yet too powerful to destroy.
It suddenly clicked. This had been Kenjaku's main target. Everything else had been a distraction. Somewhere among the baubles that the curse carried was something important enough that Kenjaku had risked attacking Jujutsu High for, risked facing his death by Jiki's hands, while also sacrificing powerful pawns to pull Satoru away, knowing their likelihood to die was high.
Jiki's attention shifted to the curse, and he gave him a dispassionate stare. The curse stepped back and grinned. "I don't like the look he's giving me, sensei." Then those two tails behind him twitched and lifted up the unconscious forms of Yuji and Todo. "Should I just break their necks and run for it?" the curse finished with a malicious grin.
Light returned back to Kenjaku's eyes as he laughed beneath Jiki's feet and he looked back up at Jiki. Gone was the look of finality on his face, gone was the confusion. Instead, he was smiling once again. "It looks like fate smiles on me still." Then he turned to the curse. "Don't be in a hurry, Mahito. The kid with the pink hair is Itadori Yuji. You can't kill him." Those words made the now-named Mahito loosen the tight grip that he had on Yuji's throat.
This time when Kenjaku spoke, he was speaking to him straight. "You're really going to make me work for it. If you want to kill me, Gojo Jiki, you might even succeed, but that day won't be today, so step back."
Jiki ignored Kenjaku. Instead, he focused on the unconscious Yuji. "Are you going to keep on sleeping, kid?"
Yuji's eyes snapped open an instant later, his pupils dilating as the genjutsu fell away. He blinked rapidly, his body jerking awake as Mahito's grin twisted into a surprised yet smile.
"Well, well, good morning, sunshine! It's nice to finally meet you," Mahito said with surprising honesty, his tails loosening around Yuji's throat. Yuji replied to him with a punch so heavy that it snapped his neck immediately, and Jiki smiled. They had thought the boy well. Now even with the new variable, it was time to counter.